University College Plymouth St Mark & St John

This summer Mike Scholey from the Centre for International Education joined a team of eleven other people interested in wildlife conservation on an expedition to study the extremely beautiful but rapidly diminishing snow leopard in Central Asia. Team members from the UK, Norway, Australia and the United States met up in Novosibirsk in Siberia. Together with a Scottish expedition leader and a Ukrainian scientist the team left Novosibirsk and drove south-east for two days across the Siberian steppe in a convoy of four Landrovers, heading for the mountains on the border between the Altai Republic and Mongolia.

The expedition base-camp was in a remote area an hour’s drive east of Kosh Agach, which the Lonely Planet Guide describes as “just off this planet”. The point of the expedition was not to see a snow leopard but to collect evidence of its existence. This was done by several means: studying the animal’s prey species, such as argali (ovis ammon) and Siberian ibex; interviewing with the aid of a Russian speaker local herders in their yurts to get evidence of any hunting (not so common as the area is a restricted zone not open to tourists); and finding out about any extended pasturing by the same herders, whose presence in high pastures might frighten off the snow leopard.

Some of the twenty-five or so mammals recorded as ‘spotted’ (either directly or via their scat) on the expedition were Altai marmot, Arctic ground squirrel, argali sheep, Bactrian camel, bear, manul, northern pika, Siberian chipmunk, Siberian ibex, wild boar and wolf. And among the sixty or so species of birds recorded as sighted (or evidence thereof) were Altai snowcock, Barbary falcon, booted eagle, cinereous vultures, demoiselle crane, Imperial eagle, Isabelline wheatear, ptarmigan, Saker falcon, steppe eagle, teal and whooper swan.

On an overnight camp away from base-camp in a remote mountain valley to the south, we found several argali in ideal snow leopard country: rocky precipices and scree slopes with snow cover above.  In a recent article in National Geographic Magazine (‘Out of the Shadows: The elusive Central Asian snow leopard steps into a  risk-filled future’ – July 2008) Douglas Chadwick says, ‘When a snow leopard stalks prey among the mountain walls, it moves on broad paws with extra fur between the toes, softly, slowly, "like snow slipping off a ledge as it melts … You almost have to turn away for a minute to tell the animal is going anywhere. If it knocks a stone loose, it will reach out a foot to stop it from falling and making noise.” One might be moving right now, perfectly silent and perfectly tensed, maybe close by. But where? That's always the question. That, and how many are left to see? That was indeed the question we were all pondering, and we returned home feeling optimistic that this shy and beautiful creature may have been watching us searching, not for it but for evidence that it was still there.